Men as a gender can be a smelly lot. There are cultural reasons underlying some of our questionable standards of personal hygiene but we are also victims of our own DNA. Like stature, baldness and the length of our ah… noses, there are many challenging aspects of our bodily functions that we simply inherited.
For example, I …

COMMENTS

Page:

"But these are not your everyday smears and streaks removed with a lens cloth: I need a windscreen ice scraper to shift this gunge. The man responsible (for it could only be a man) must be doing motorcycle maintenance or serving kebabs while sitting at my desk." -- Solution, try smearing Vaseline over your screen at the end of the day to say a big thank you to the guy working nights.

Re: And have you not yet tried the wonderful new science

Your midnight compatriot is obviously pawing at something he desires on the screen. Assuming the office is quiet at nighttime I'm going to presume it's naked ladies. The next obvious inference from there is that he's wanking.

*choke*

Re: *choke*

Work in a school

with 400 snotty little things (especially the lower years where they are still wetting themselves) who have no idea that the screen doesn't need to be touched, or that using a hanky to rid bogies that have been extricated with due care and attention with a finger might be a good idea before touching the keyboards.

I've worked in many primaries where you are literally afraid to touch the keyboard (and staff have their own!) or screen and even on ones where the smears can build up to the point where you can't read the text because it's all fuzzy - in a SINGLE DAY before the cleaners can get round again!

The adults are no better and I admit that even my personal, private laptop that NOBODY touches on pain of death often has to be screen-wiped because of visible fingerprints (quite clearly mine) that I have no idea how they got there.

And MS's next bright idea? Let's all use touchscreens to start programs and do word-processing. *REALLY* not looking forward to next year's upgrade to Windows 8 on the touchscreen PC's we bought (which, fortunately, have no XP touchscreen driver, so we just didn't tell anyone that they *are* touchscreen)...

P.S. We use a company called BugBusters who will come in and sanitise all your work surfaces for a decent price. We currently use them 2-3 times a year, on top of the amount of personal cleaning, cleaner-cleaning, and "look what you've done, now wipe it off" cleaning that our computer screens get.

Tip of the day (or is that night)

Ah, dirty dishes...

I got fed up with washing the dishes twice (once before using, once after) because my lazy git flatmate wouldn't clean them that I started doing what he did, i.e. just leave the dirty dishes. We wound up without any empty surface in the kitchen until he did a cleaning frenzy because his mum was visiting....

Re: Ah, dirty dishes...

The essential first step of every recipe in student digs is to locate precisely the utensils you require in the pile of dirty stuff, and wash ONLY THEM. At the end of the meal, the kitchen has been returned to the base state, and, most importantly, you haven't done an unfair amount os washing up.

Re: Ah, dirty dishes...

I used a different approach - I forbid my roommates from doing any kitchen cleaning (as they never did it to my satisfaction anyway). That meant I spent half an hour or so each day washing dishes and the like, but 1) they were clean and 2) I had the twin pleasures of holding the high moral ground and being a pompous martinet.

Also, this seemed to shame my roommates into dividing up some of the other chores, so it all worked out in the end. And there was no arguing over piles of dirty dishes.

Re: Top Tip

Re: Top Tip

Re: Top Tip

There's your problem. Even if you don't want to, you will eat some of it - either through it dissolving into acidic foods, or through abrasion with the food or your utensils (particularly a problem for foil.)

Re: Top Tip

Winds me up.....

.....when I am showing someone something on my laptop screen and then THEY start prodding it to point things out. I've actually remarked that "it isn't a touchscreen you know" and found myself wondering if they prod everything in their life so hard....

Re: Somtehing worst than greasy fingers...

Mashing the screen makes me want to kill...

I hate it when you are showing someone something on your computer and they then proceed to mash their fingers into your perfectly clean (non touch) screen so they can point something out. They then proceed to drag their finger around the screen for no apparent reason while wittering on about whatever it was that has, by that point, left my mind as I am so enraged by their screen sullying antics, that I want to break their greasy fingers.

I've even had people dragging biros around the screen writing side down, apologizing for the ink marks, yet still continuing to use the pen in the same fucking way!

If you really really have to touch a non touch screen, all you have to do is turn your hand over and touch the screen with the tip of your finger nail... almost never leaves marks.

Re: Mashing the screen makes me want to kill...

What a computer really needs is some form of pointer device (like an on screen arrow) that could be used by the observer to accurately indicate what they were talking about. It could be moved around by some form of physical control, maybe kept near the keyboard.

Re: Mashing the screen makes me want to kill...

If I need to physically gesture at my screen, I tend to use a drumstick. It doubles up as both an excellent pointy stick and a handy drubbing device should underlings, minions, stray users and greasy buggers that want to naff up your screen get out of hand and need a little discipline to bring them back into line!

Re: a drumstick

Re: Mashing the screen makes me want to kill...

>What a computer really needs is some form of pointer device (like an on screen arrow) that

>could be used by the observer to accurately indicate what they were talking about. It could

>be moved around by some form of physical control, maybe kept near the keyboard.

A few years ago I was a faculty member in a university Computer Science department. The department head from MIS wanted to give a demo, needed to point, and excused himself to go get his red dot laser pointer. Before he ran, I suggested using this arrow thing you mention--but he didn't understand how it would work for just pointing.

This is one of my pet peeves. People jabbing, physically, at your screen when they want to show you something. It drives me up the wall. Also, why is it, only the most grubbiest bastards that do it the most. You know the type; their scent makes your eyes water at 20 metres, you can see them picking their noses and gums (usually in order) making a beeline for your desk. Before you know it, your screen is covered in various biologic substances, you want to vomit as their foul breath washes over you and you have this powerful urge to spray Dettol into their faces (and probably have them scream "It Burns! It Burns! The Hygiene!").

Hmm...

My boss had one of those grand and a half Mac cinema displays, fingerprints on it drove him up the wall to the point that he started threatening to dust it for fingerprints. We discovered that nose grease is particularly smeary with the added plus that you can't dust for noses.

Oh yes!

I spend most of my working life working from home so can keep laptop & second display clear & pristine as they *have* to be. A couple of months ago I had to spend a couple of days in one of the corporate data centres & my colleagues laptop crapped out so he had to use mine AND HE TOUCHED THE SCREEN REPEATEDLY leaving fingerprints. To this day he has no idea how close he came to death although he did wonder why I kept cleaning the screen while was using the laptop...

Back when smoking was still allowed in offices...

... I'd see some incredibly grubby keyboards. Not everyone was like that, I think what made the difference was smoking whilst actually using the keyboard: the chap next to me chain-smoked pretty much all day long and all his key-tops were covered in a not-so-thin layer of brown smeg. He was no Pigpen-type character, he just had this perpetual fog around him (even as a smoker myself it was a bit much!) Then again, I shouldn't judge since my keyboard would end up full of crumbs due to me working while I was eating. I dread to think that the collective detritus eventually grew into, especially after being periodically watered with spilt coffee.

Smeary screens are a bit of a mystery, though. Do people really jab at them with snotty/greasy/unmentionable fingers? Maybe they try to taste the icons and lick them.

Reminds me of the days when the first thing I had to do in the morning was to upend the keyboard and give it a good shake to remove the bits of rollie and beard left from the nightshift operator (an aging hippy, who despite being white, lived in St Pauls, Bristol in the 80s).

Finger marks on the screen have always been a problem, have had to grin and bear it more often than I'd like when some muppet jabbed their finger at the screen to emphasise some point leaving greasy finger marks on the screen.

fingering

I used to use a MBP 17 matte macbook. It cost me a fair amount of cash, though I use it for work rather than the crappy work laptop I have been issued with.

You know the one with the lovely matte screen - with no glass in front.

The number of people who will endevour to 'point out' things on a screen when around your desk and are seemingly unable to avoid poking their 1.greasy. 2. solid fingers into my screen is truly astounding. Seemingly unable to point without making LCD rainbows all over the pressure point, as their apparently monocular vision helps thrust another of their grotty digits into the LCD matrix.

Having now replaced it with a MBP15 retina - I admit to finding the glare of the glass less than welcome - however the fact that my depth perception limited colleagues hit glass with their digits is far less disturbing at least - I need only worry about cleaning the grease off and not having to replaced a cracked screen.